Got 3 laptops stolen from my room (don't ask how, most of us were in and a couple of us were just outside the house). Since the police are completely useless I've thought of a way to track mine.

My Windows Messenger is set to automatically sign in on startup. So if it signs in from their location I can hopefully get the IP that connected (either by netstat if I'm lucky enough to catch them in the act, or hopefully get in touch with windows for a log of IPs maybe). I can then either get in contact with the ISP or just give the IP to the police if they feel capable enough to follow it through.

Other than computer stuff, you can do some detective work, just talk to people. It was stolen on campus right, whoever did it, is gonna start bragging about it. Are there security cameras? Maybe you can look at them and see if you recognize anyone in the area. People make mistakes and people talk, remember that. Also they might be put up for sale so check ebay and other sites where people sell things online, like Craigslist.

Naa i live in the city centre and as usual all the student houses are in the poorer, rougher areas. There's no chance of catching them, I could walk past them and not notice. I live in a ground floor flat where the windows are painted shut and there are sort of cage things accross them. There was a 2min gap where I went to the car, the door may have been unlocked but its rare, and there were 4 people in the flat! 2 of which were only separated front the entrance by a door and heard nothing Feels like a proper covert op.!

They are probably going to wipe them and sell them. So there isn't really anything you can do. If they are recovered, you can use things like the MAC address on the NIC, the serial number of the laptop, or the Windows key to prove it is yours.

You could maybe check with Microsoft and see if anyone has tried to register your windows key. I don't know if that will help or not though.

I was thinking about using the Mac address to begin with, as I'm registered with HP I thought maybe they could track it at their end through that but I was reading and it seems the Mac address won't be much use. As for the windows key, lets just say that they would be reluctant to help me. It's looking more and more like a practical joke gone too far so we'll see what happens. If it does turn up through a misjudged joke I'm gonna Pwn my flatmates laptop and as he comes to me when he's having computer problems I'm just gonna f#([1 million dollars] it up even more.

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